Grandal still 'scratching surface'

Comfort level with altered stance increasing as season wears on

The Padres' Yasmani Grandal points up as he nears home plate after he hit a home run in the second inning. The Padres shutout the New York Mets 6-0 at Petco Park on Saturday.
Hayne Palmour IV — UT San Diego

The Padres' Yasmani Grandal points up as he nears home plate after he hit a home run in the second inning. The Padres shutout the New York Mets 6-0 at Petco Park on Saturday.
/ UT San Diego

ST. LOUIS  With every swing, Yasmani Grandal is sinking into a comfort zone with a batting stance he began to retool again in late May. What he’s lacked at times in consistency, the Padres’ switch-hitting catcher has made up in flashes of sheer raw power.

Take, for instance, Grandal’s pinch-hit homer in the ninth inning Friday night off All-Star reliever Pat Neshek: ESPN’s home run tracker clocked the ball off the bat at 109.8 mph, Grandal’s hardest-hit homer of the season, en route to its resting spot halfway up the batters’-eye grass in center, some 431 feet away from home plate.

“I definitely feel like this year I’ve hit the ball harder than I ever have,” said Grandal, who has a career-high 10 homers despite entering Saturday’s game with a .209 average. “It’s just being able to do that on a consistent basis.”

Give him time on that one.

After all, he’s less than a year removed from reconstructive knee surgery and less than two months into a second round of significant tinkering with his set-up at the plate.

Most of the overhaul, which included ditching his leg kick, occurred over the offseason. Since then he’s opted to stand a bit taller in the box to alleviate pressure on his surgically-repaired right knee.

The ups and downs that have followed have everything to do with massaging muscle memory patterns while trying to remain productive during the season. Some days have been better than others.

“Before when I had my leg kick I could adjust from pitch to pitch whether I was late or if I wasn’t hitting on my back leg or my hands were back – I could feel that,” Grandal said. “Right now, it got to a point the last week and a half where just one bad swing took me out of a rhythm. It’s trying to figure out what I was doing – was I getting long, was I on my front foot, was I turning my back foot? …

“It’s just repetition – doing the same thing over and over and over.”

That repetition may not end with the close of the 2014 season.

Grandal said he is considering a winterball assignment to both further condition his knee and whip his swing in shape. A determining factor is whether or not he can get up to 350 at-bats this year, which would go a long ways toward furthering his development.

“He’s still scratching the surface on who he’s going to be,” hitting coach Phil Plantier said. “He’s still getting better. There’s still improvements for him to make and consistency that needs to settle in.”

Notable

Yangervis Solarte returned to the starting lineup – at third base and in the leadoff spot – after missing the previous two games with an injury that he said Saturday had settled more in his lower back. The original prognosis was a mild left oblique strain, which likely would have kept him out of the lineup longer. “Better, better, better,” Solarte said before Saturday’s game. “I don’t feel tight in my lower back.”

RHP Joe Wieland struck out five and allowed two runs on four hits and no walks in six innings Friday night at Triple-A El Paso. He threw 46 of his 68 pitches for strikes in a highly-efficient outing. Wieland, who hasn’t pitched in the majors since undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2012, is a candidate to pick up innings in the majors once rosters expand in September.

SS Ryan Jackson has begun hitting off a tee with both hands in Arizona while working his way back from right wrist surgery in June. He is expected to be ready for game action in early September. Acquired over the offseason from the Astros for 1B Jesus Guzman, Jackson played in four games at Triple-A El Paso before the injury forced him to the disabled list.